The U.S. Navy seeks a partner for licensing and collaboration on a method of improving radiation tolerance of floating gate memories including a single or a block of floating gate transistors.

Many semiconductor electronic components are susceptible to radiation damage. Radiation hardening is used to resist damage and malfunctions due to ionizing radiation which can be found, among other places, in space, high-altitude flights, and around nuclear reactors or particle accelerators. Due to the extensive development and testing required to produce a radiation-tolerant design of a semiconductor electronic component, radiation-hardened components tend to lag behind the most recent developments.

The radiation sensitivity of floating gate memory technologies is of great interest due to an ever growing need for memory storage. When floating gate devices are exposed to radiation, a number of errors can occur such as when a floating gate device should be read in a "0" state, but is read as in an "1" state. Other errors may include non-function of a transistor, errors in data communication from one component to another, and other data corruption errors.

NSWC Crane has developed and patented a method of improving radiation tolerance of a floating gate transistor. Various embodiments of the invention provide an improvement to radiation tolerance of solid state data systems including floating gate devices. The invention can include a variety of methods of operation or use of systems that include floating gate systems or structures as well as communication systems and data bus or processing systems.